


a world that is entirely our own

by aceofdiamonds



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 16:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5878054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofdiamonds/pseuds/aceofdiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>will runs into someone who doesn't have a daemon but who definitely has <i>something</i> special going on. that, or he's extraordinarily good at training stags to stand by his side. </p>
<p>or, will parry meets harry potter on a summer's day in the middle of a dementor attack</p>
            </blockquote>





	a world that is entirely our own

**Author's Note:**

> i love harry and i love will and i love the idea of daemons and patronuses and whatever overlap there is between the two of them. for context sake harry is around 25? and will is about 15? title is a harry potter quote.

  
After time in Lyra's Oxford, to be shown daemons and to experience them as they truly are a part of you, to meet your own daemon in that familiar way you greet an old friend, to be handed all of this and then to have it taken away is cruel. It doesn't help that Will is able to see Kirjava and to discuss things with her the way he once would be confined to his own head -- no, this only makes things worse, as he is left yearning for the company of others, for Lyra and Pan, for Mary's daemon, who appears sporadically and only for minutes at a time.   
  
Sometimes Will wonders if he wishes he had never killed that man, if he had never stepped into other universes, if he had never lost two of his fingers for a knife that he can no longer use. He wonders all of this but the thought of never having met Lyra is enough for him to push away everything else and be glad he had the chance at all.

But it's changed him, both in the way he looks at the world and in the way he feels about love and happiness and the secrets between people who are meant to be. He knows he's young, that this is all too much to experience before he's old enough to drive, but he's lived enough for three lifetimes and already he's fifteen and exhausted.

It's when he's out walking on his way to Mary’s with Kirjava on his shoulder on a sunny evening not far from Midsummer’s Day that he has to pause and wonder if this world is really as ordinary as he used to think.

“Kirjava?” he says as he feels a coldness creeping along his shoulders, washing over his head in one swift movement, pulling him into a numb, sad, world. “Kirjava! What's happening?”

He has his eyes open; the world hasn't changed but when he breathes he can see his breath in the air in front of him, unsuitable for this time of year, and he can hear a screaming in his head. He reaches out for Lyra without thinking, grabbing for a transparent hand as they struggle out of the Land of the Dead, and then he's screaming and Lyra is falling and --

“Will!” Kirjava cries, her voice shaky too as they're forced to relive the moment Will met his dad and the moment he lost him. “Will!” she says again, jumping to the ground and landing shakily on her four paws.

His knees are buckling; he grabs the wall beside them, hands slipping over the stone. He blinks into the sky where the sun is still bright, not a cloud in sight, but when he holds an arm in front of him he sees a film of fog wrap around him. “Spectres, Kirjava?”

“It can't be, Will,” she shrieks because it would be just Will’s luck to fall victim to the things he sacrificed Lyra’s love for.

And then above the roaring in his ears he hears someone else shout, someone not in his head, and, just as he felt the cold sweep over him, he slowly begins to feel warm again. He wiggles his fingers as he gets feeling back in them, pressing them against the wall so the jagged brick makes him inhale sharply at the pain.

“What happened, Java?” Will gasps, tipping his head back against the wall.

“Dementors,” a deep voice tells him from close by. Will’s eyes fly open to see a man standing in front of him, a tall man with messy dark hair and a bright animal by his side. "There shouldn't be any left," he mutters more to himself than to Will but Will has always been a horribly curious child.

"How did you do that?" Will asks, shock making him forget the respectful _sir_ the man deserves.  

The man startles as though he's realised he shouldn't have spoken, hurriedly shoving what looks like a wand into his back pocket. He brushes his hand over his forehead, passing over a thin jagged scar. The stag daemon, spirit, _whatever_ , canters around them both, neck bowed. As it moves Will feels the final shreds of coldness lingering in the air siphon away, a comfortable heat replacing it.   
  
"I should wipe your memory," he says, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck and frowning slightly. "But --"   
  
"But I've seen more than this other places," Will says, hurriedly, almost desperately, because the thought of someone taking pieces of thoughts and leaving him with a blank space is more terrifying than that thing he just encountered.

The man nods like this is what he was expecting but this is a different type of magic from Will’s world, from Lyra’s world, and Will doesn't understand one bit of it. “How are you doing that?” Will asks then, latching onto the thing closest to what he knows.

“Doing what?”

“How are you controlling your daemon like that?” Kirjava hums in agreement, settling back onto Will’s shoulder.

“My daemon?” the man repeats, frowning. He gestures to the spot where the stag used to be because when Will manages to tear his eyes away from the man he sees that the giant silvery stag has gone. He stops himself from whirling around in a circle to check because with the Spectres and the hallucinations he's not entirely sure he isn't suffering from heat stroke or something like that. Never mind that it's hardly hot enough for that. “Do you mean my Patronus?”

And thank God. “If that's what you call it, yeah,” Will agrees.

The man glances at the alley beside them as though he can't decide whether to make his exit now that he's done his good deed for the day and saved Will from eternal sadness or whatever would happen to him if he'd been stuck like that for much longer. He considers asking what would happen but decides he can live without the probably terrifying answer. Kirjava purrs softly in his ear to calm them both down as the man continues to dither between Will and the alley.

“It's a part of my soul,” the man says and then he stops and frowns. “I think. I'm not sure I was ever told exactly what it is.”

“That's what a daemon is,” Will says, voice rising in excitement. Kirjava’s claws dig into his shoulder gently to remind him that they're in public. “Are you from here?”

“I live in London,” he says and his hand strays to the waistband where Will is assuming his wand is kept. He's putting together his own theories about what's going on here and he's settling on the wizard explanation even though in Lyra’s world there are no male witches and no Patronuses. “Are you from around here?” the man asks now, clearly trying to get back on even footing.

“Yeah.”

“So how do you know about these --” and he waves his hand which Will decides must mean the daemons and the Patronus and the fact that he hasn’t run away screaming yet, “if you live in Mugg -- if you live without magic?”

All Will does to this is shrug because he doesn’t quite know how to go into the specifics of multiple universes and a Dust that he’s put his heart on the line to protect. “I’ve done some things,” he says vaguely, and that gets a snort of laughter from the man.

“I know all about that,” he says and then he holds out his hand. “I’m Harry. Harry Potter.”

“Will Parry.” When his hand joins Harry’s he catches pale scars on the back of Harry’s hand that look to be in the shape of words and he believes what Harry had said when he agreed with Will seconds before.

“Nice to meet you, Will,” and Will decides that he’s polite and also, well, _magic_ , but his eyes don’t stray from Will’s to the large cat on his shoulder so Will decides he can’t see Kirjava, even when she yowls loudly when Will shakes his shoulder experimentally. Harry smiles but doesn’t indicate that he heard anything. “I better let you on your way.”

“Don’t take this away from me,” Will blurts out, still terrified that Harry will remove parts of his memory that he doesn’t want to lose.

“I won’t,” Harry promises, running a hand through his hair. Again Will’s eyes catch the glint of silvery writing etched into his skin. “I don’t think there’s any harm in you seeing my Patronus,” he says, not giving the stag a name the way Will gave Kirjava. “I’ll need to ask Hermione about daemons, see what she knows.”

“It’d be cool if you came here again,” Will says, a little too eagerly in his need for something out of the ordinary in his now mostly quiet life.

Harry laughs, already stepping into the alley to do whatever he does to leave. Will cranes his neck to see if there’s a broomstick propped against the wall. “No broomstick,” Harry says, catching him. “I’ll look out for you next time I’m in the area, Will.”

"Thanks for saving me!" Will calls before it's too late. "I owe you one." 

Harry grins. And then, as Will and Kirjava stare down the gloomy alley, Harry turns on the spot and disappears with a loud _crack_.

Will stands open mouthed for a few seconds more before Kirjava drops to the ground gracefully and winds around his knees, her tail swishing along his leg -- her signal to tell Will to get a move on. “Think Mary’ll believe what happened, Java?”

“I don’t think Harry wants us to tell,” she argues, padding along the pavement beside him. The streets are quiet, almost eerily so, but Will doesn’t question it; means less looks when he’s chatting to mid-air.

“I hope he comes back,” Will sighs, picking Kirjava up to cross the wide road. “I know I should be grateful we’re alive and everything but I miss some of the magic from Lyra’s world, don’t you?”

She wriggles to the ground and then sniffs, tail twisting in the air. “I think this amount of magic is quite enough, thank you.”

  



End file.
